Electronic messaging, such as through email, is a powerful communication tool for the dissemination of information. However, the ease of sending messages can result in a recipient receiving large numbers of messages in a single day. This is because, in addition to message sent by actual people, a recipient may receive messages generated by machines from third party services such as airlines, invitation generating companies, courier services, and social media sites. These messages may include confirmations, notifications, promotions, social media updates, and messages from collaboration system.
To address the large number of messages received by recipients, modern messaging systems attempt to classify messages for recipients using a set of message categories. That is, as part of the delivery process of messages to recipients, the messaging system reviews the messages and determines which category, from a set of message categories, to assign the message. However, the appropriate classification of messages into such categories remains a challenging problem. One reason for this is that there is a limited amount of information in messages (by which to categorize such messages). Another reason message categorization remains a challenge is due to the often idiosyncratic, nonorthogonal, and highly subjective characteristics of the message categories themselves. In short, the messages to be categorized often have very little information that can be used to reliably categorize them, and the message categories within any given set of message categories often have features that overlap with other message categories in the set.
The above identified technical problems are reduced or eliminated by the systems and methods disclosed herein.